"But the fact that a woman may have already ovulated 12 hours before she is raped, you're not going to prevent a pregnancy there by a woman's body shutting anything down because the horse has already left the barn, so to speak," Gingrey continued. "And yet the media took that and tore it apart."

So Akin is wrong, but the media shouldn't have torn it apart because he might have been right in an utterly different situation?

Am I badly misreading that? It sounds like he defends Akin, then goes and explains in painful rapey detail why Akin was confusing an old rapists tale with medical fact, then goes on to say that the other idiot - Mourdoch? - was ignorant and incorrect, but had his heart in the right place?

How is it even possible there are this many idiots, in positions of power, who actively defend and embrace rape? I really felt like rape was something that nearly everyone in the universe agreed was a terrible thing, and yet, every other day, someone in the Republican party comes out with a new way of saying it's not so bad. I honestly don't understand how the party has essentially come out in goddamned favor of rape. Of all the things in the entire universe they could come out in favor of, that's the one they chose? Carjacking would be more popular.

From another article:And in Missouri, Todd Akin ... was asked by a local news source about rape and he said, 'Look, in a legitimate rape situation' - and what he meant by legitimate rape was just look, someone can say I was raped: a scared-to-death 15-year-old that becomes impregnated by her boyfriend and then has to tell her parents, that's pretty tough and might on some occasion say, 'Hey, I was raped.' That's what he meant when he said legitimate rape versus non-legitimate rape. I don't find anything so horrible about that. But then he went on and said that in a situation of rape, of a legitimate rape, a woman's body has a way of shutting down so the pregnancy would not occur. He's partly right on that.

For those of you who stopped counting and started bleeding from the eyes, that was nine. Or, nine more uses of the word "rape" than any Republican should put into a single paragraph.

"We tell infertile couples all the time that are having trouble conceiving because of the woman not ovulating, 'Just relax. Drink a glass of wine. And don't be so tense and uptight because all that adrenaline can cause you not to ovulate.' So he was partially right wasn't he?"

"But the fact that a woman may have already ovulated 12 hours before she is raped, you're not going to prevent a pregnancy there by a woman's body shutting anything down because the horse has already left the barn, so to speak," Gingrey continued. "And yet the media took that and tore it apart."

So, the logic here is that stress might prevent a woman from ovulating DURING rape?And this is supposed to lessen the probability of conception?